No charges in Athens street sex caught on video

Mary Beth Lane, The Columbus Dispatch

Monday

Oct 28, 2013 at 12:01 AMOct 29, 2013 at 9:26 AM

ATHENS, Ohio - No one will be charged over a public sex act on a downtown street during Ohio University's Homecoming weekend. An Athens County grand jury found no probable cause to charge anyone with a crime, Prosecutor Keller Blackburn said yesterday.

ATHENS, Ohio — No one will be charged over a public sex act on a downtown street during Ohio University’s Homecoming weekend.

An Athens County grand jury found no probable cause to charge anyone with a crime, Prosecutor Keller Blackburn said yesterday.

Athens police investigated whether public sex between a man and a woman, both 20 and OU students, along one of the city’s main streets early on Oct. 12 was a rape.

“While a grand jury found this was not rape, this was not appropriate,” Blackburn said of the public sex.

He gave this account:

The pair met for the first time at a downtown bar, had drinks and left when the bar closed at 2:30 a.m. They kissed as they walked along Court Street, and at one point they had to be shooed from the hood of a car on which they lay kissing.

About 3 a.m., they stopped in front of a bank building, where the man performed oral sex on the woman as she leaned against the building. She appeared to be responsive. She smiled and grabbed the back of the man’s head. At one point, the man asked her if he should stop because a crowd was building. She said no. A witness verified the exchange.

The woman then walked with the man to his apartment on Court Street, where they stayed from 3:30 a.m. to 6:30 a.m. The pair then walked to a gas station, and the man then walked her home. He sent her cellphone a text message with his cellphone number. She slept until noon and woke up with no memory of what had happened.

The woman filed a police report on Oct. 13 saying that the encounter wasn’t consensual. She filed the report after learning from her roommate that photos and video of the incident taken by passers-by were widely shared on social media such as Instagram and Twitter.

She tested negative for any date-rape drug, and neither student was aware that they were being videotaped by onlookers.

“There is a lesson to be learned here,” Blackburn said. “Everything we do, every time we act, has the ability to be recorded. We are living in a different world.”

The recorded encounter provoked widespread reaction online; some people scolded the onlookers for not intervening.

mlane@dispatch.com

@MaryBethLane1

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